The Female Brain, Discovering Women
- Author
- Louann Brizendine
- Publisher
- Readersbook | published 2007-06-18
- Category
- Self-help
- Book introduction
- The 1% secret that the female brain has and the male brain doesn't The female brain, ...
I once went to Daegu to see Jae-geun. I think the memory from then was the road to Daegu after having a drink with Jae-ung in Daegu and spending the whole next day playing with Su-min? Or, hmm....was it the road straight from Seoul to Daegu....I can't quite remember whether it was the former or the latter, but the former is probably more likely. When it was the latter I bought about three albums, and since I stopped by Kyobo Bookstore that time, this was during my freshman year of university. I was reading a book leaning against the shelf at the Yeongpung Bookstore near Banwoldang Station in Daegu. The content was that the perception and behavior of young boys and girls toward 'play' is not a socially assigned and acquired social gender role, but the manifestation of 'memories' input into genes and the brain over a long time. Even if you hand a girl a fire truck, she is likely to cover the fire truck with a blanket and say 'Fire truck, are you warm?', while even if you give a boy a doll, he is likely to use that doll for power-oriented play like 'war games.' Of course a boy can also engage in peace-oriented, relationship-oriented house play, but the probability of that is said to be extremely low. As long as ordinary hormone levels are present, that is. Anyway, I was reading this book without even knowing its title (I couldn't even recall the detailed title), when someone from Daesun Jinrihoe said they could feel an energy from my back and asked to talk somewhere, so I couldn't keep reading. Well, we even went to a cafe and had a drink together, and I went to the house where those people study and had a cup of tea while listening to their ideology, and in doing so I was late for an appointment, so I hurriedly went back to the bookstore. So I couldn't remember the title of this book, and it lingered in my head for over a year. Then, hmm...I was trying to buy a book on Aladin and was judging books online by title and cover alone, when my girlfriend happened to say she had bought a book about 'how men think,' and I unfailingly thought of this book whose title I couldn't even remember. As I hurriedly browsed by title, it suddenly occurred to me that this might be it, and when I previewed a few pages, it was right. This was the book. So I picked this book as the last one to fill out 50,000 won and bought it, and about two years after first encountering this book, I learned both its 'title' and its 'content.'
The implications of this book for me are very great. There are so many things that I wish I had found sooner. First, when I read this book back then, my mind was practically undergoing a 'revolution.' From a young age I thought that most 'gender perception' and 'gender roles' were socially determined. That's because I had a father and mother who wanted results different from the thoughts and emotions running in my brain. At the time, I refused to practice the 'manliness' my father demanded of me. And I couldn't accept the reasons for why I should. Most young children don't understand the rationality behind accepting adults' ideas. Moreover, since I had no preconceptions or images about 'manliness,' my father's method of trying to instill in 8-, 9-year-old me a 'manliness' I didn't want proceeded in a direction different from his intentions. My experience was enough to make me think that 'gender role' and 'gender perception' are close to socially formed 'gender.' But that idea was shattered. I shifted the 'dominance' I had long believed in. To hormones and genes. (It's not that there is no social influence. Whereas before it was 'social influence: 5 VS 5: hormonal and biological forces,' now it has changed to about 2:8.) Last year, talking with Sang-hyeon, I had said that humans are, in the end, beings whose emotions, feelings, and thoughts are all determined by hormones, and it felt like I was seeing that clearly proven before my eyes. Reading about how the 'male,' during puberty and infant development when testosterone increases 25 times more than usual, is more aggressive than at other times, doesn't listen well to others, becomes less talkative, and on average thinks about sex once every 52 seconds, and how a woman, as she begins to menstruate and comes under the influence of estrogen and progesterone, becomes very bright, intimate, and positive for about two weeks of the cycle, and then for the remaining two weeks somehow becomes depressed, in a bad mood, and uncooperative, changed my thinking.
Second is the point that humans have 'memories' recorded in DNA preserved over tens of thousands of years, and because of these memories there are behaviors that men and women inevitably do. I had often heard the story that when a man has a problem, he tends to go into a cave alone to solve it and come out, and also that aggression had its origins in hunting animals and in war. But I had never specifically seen what kind of 'memory' is embedded in women, and this book says that women, because the probability of themselves and their children falling into danger when a man went out hunting was high if they couldn't harmonize well with others, had no choice but to form good relationships at least on the surface, and considering that it's been less than 300 years since humans achieved the Industrial Revolution, and at most about 17,000 years since they began to settle (and considering that even settling didn't necessarily guarantee survival), maintaining relationships, consideration, and harmony must have been essential for women.
So in a man-woman relationship, once they get into a fight, men generally can speak well, expressing their opinions based on an aggressive tendency, whereas women, because they focus on maintaining the relationship, the stronger their desire to keep the relationship, the more they can't speak, fearing that saying anything might break it. And this, it says, stems from men being overflowing with 'testosterone' that also doesn't suddenly decrease, and another reason is that women are under the influence of 'estrogen.' It says this is because women are more strongly affected than men by this very 'estrogen,' which draws in hormones that can bring feelings of happiness and satisfaction, like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
Third, the stress women get from immersing themselves in and pouring passion into work or study causes the distribution of cortisol, a stress-inducing hormone, and when this cortisol is secreted, it drives the secretion of oxytocin, which brings happiness, to the bottom, and because of this I saw a case where even a man-woman relationship with no particular problems changed because the woman, not secreting oxytocin, talked about her stress to the man, changing what the man had thought was a relationship with no problems at all. When my girlfriend went on her internship and came back exhausted every time, my phone calls with her were always so uncomfortable. I think it stemmed from the fact that there was no way for me to relieve her stress. My old belief that 'if you listen and empathize, it gets resolved' was mercilessly shattered at that point. I began to harbor bad thoughts about the relationship, and I struggled every time.
Fourth is that for a romantic relationship between a woman and a man to last, 'physical affection' is necessary. For a woman, even just a hug of about 20 seconds secretes an enormous amount of oxytocin. This provides happiness through prolonged skin contact even amid bad things, offering the possibility of covering over those bad things with that happiness, but it means that without prolonged physical affection between lovers, oxytocin isn't secreted merely by gazing at and thinking about the other person, and this cannot bring happiness. Just like now.
It seems that before the 1970s no one had thought of the 'female brain' as an independent brain. In an era that judged the brains of female and male animals to be different, why did they think the human brain was the same for women and men? I don't really know the reason either, but probably the majority would share the opinion that it was an attitude created by a male-centered society. Recently, methods of imaging the brain in real time have emerged, and through them it has been proven that the male brain and the female brain are markedly different, and as a result people have begun to delve individually into the research subject of the 'female brain,' which had not been considered separately before, and I think that's how a book like this came to be made. There are no parts written in a very difficult way, and it's really made to be understood smoothly.
Recently, almost all my thoughts about relationships have been slightly off, and since it's my turn to talk this time, I had intended to have a time of acknowledging and reflecting on my past wrongdoings, but this book, since human behavior is determined by 'hormones,' didn't take the stance of calling this any kind of 'wrong.' For example, it says that in a situation where a woman in a relationship doesn't want to say anything due to work stress, if the man continually says it's okay and shows physical affection, the situation improves, and since I'm in exactly that situation, what else is there to say? Many of the things I had thought were 'misunderstandings.' Of course, some of it is due to acquired traits formed once in childhood, but it's a bit of a relief to think that much of it is because of 'hormones.' (My head understands it, but my heart probably hasn't caught up yet haha)
But on the contrary, much has come up to think about. I've come to think that I have somewhat less testosterone than the average man. I have no memory of feeling dominated by sexual desire or aggression, and they have generally stayed at a level I could always control. And as for the fear of breaking a relationship, I suppose I felt I have somewhat more estrogen. I know a wide range of people but am closer to those I'm close with, and value consideration and harmony in relationships with people, and such things are heavily influenced by estrogen. However, my thoughts about oxytocin, serotonin, progesterone, and testosterone in romantic relationships are still hard to organize. My body is worn out, so I may need to rest more before continuing.
It's nice that what I have to say seems to come together simply. I think next I'll read Volume 4 of Les Misérables quickly; since I haven't even been able to write about Volume 3, I figure reading comes first, so I'll read it first and think about what comes after afterward.^^ I struggled, sick for four whole days, but setting aside all the books I'd been reading since yesterday and reading this book was a very good choice.
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